


petite bête

by mardisoir



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jehanparnasse Week 2019, Mental Health Issues, Non-Binary Jean Prouvaire, Other, Substance Abuse, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-01-31 08:55:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21443566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardisoir/pseuds/mardisoir
Summary: tender/lies
Relationships: Montparnasse/Jean Prouvaire
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	petite bête

The scrape of flint, a flicker of flame in the dark and the scent of smoke drifts in the cool night air.   
  
Jehan trails the tip of one finger along a half-healed string of little round burns, pressed like kisses into the tender underside of their forearm. The sheets are tacky with drying blood, the pillow under their cheek damp. Jehan wants to be held more than anything, more than breathing. They wrap their own arms around their ribcage.

_I am shattered like a vase_, they think. A mess of broken crystal and bruised petals, emotions pooling like water.  
  
Montparnasse is a dark shape on the edge of the bed, back turned, elbows leaning on his knees. Jehan watches the bright point of the cigarette wavering as he inhales.  
  
“I won’t do it again.” He speaks through a veil of smoke.

The words settle like a blade against Jehan’s throat and they swallow against the weight of them.  
  
“You say that every time.”

* * *

They meet at a party.

Jehan’s craving solitude only a little more than they want drunken commiserations so they’re alone, sitting outside beneath clouded over skies watching for brief glimpses of stars. The house is loud behind them, spilling over with light and laughter and liquor. It doesn’t match their wine-dark mood.

There’s a yawning emptiness in Jehan’s chest, helpless fury lodging like a stone in their throat. They want to throw the mostly empty bottle in their hand against the stone wall and watch it smash so that the broken glass might fly into their eyes like shards of fairytale ice. Instead, they take another sip. The wine is corked and spoiled. It tastes poisonous. 

Everyone else is inside still, and although Jehan had brushed off all offers of company, claiming they wanted a moment to themself, they’re still irrationally upset that no one has come to check on them. Their friends know to leave them alone when they get like this, and it’s for the best, but it still feels like abandonment. They want to be coddled, even knowing that they’d lash out at the first person who tried.

Jehan takes another sip of sour-sharp wine. It’s thin and gritty on their tongue, stinging their lips.  


“Hello,” a voice says and Jehan looks up into fathomless dark eyes. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing out here, all alone?”  
  
_Pretty thing._

Later, Jehan will realise they were caught up on entirely the wrong word.

* * *

Montparnasse looks like a crime scene.

He is light glittering on broken glass, tape screaming DO NOT CROSS fluttering in the night air. Arrogant to the point of destruction, the kind of boy who crushes flowers beneath his heels when he walks. He has a smile like the edge of a knife and when he laughs, cruel, dismissive, something in Jehan rings like a struck bell - _this one this one this one._

Montparnasse has a voice like liquor, rich, sweet and heady, it burns on the way down.  
  
_Slut_, he croons the word like poetry. _Lovely little monster, who’d ever look at you and guess what you are?_

* * *

It’s a secret.

Jehan keeps their hands in their lap, fingers straying to press against where they’re sore and aching. 

In the fluorescent light of the bathroom, head swimming with too many drinks, they scrape their nails across dark purple-black bruises, trace the blood crusted imprint of perfect teeth.

Jehan washes their hands and waits for the room to stop spinning. When they meet their own eyes in the mirror over the sink they don’t recognise the person looking back.

It’s a forced effort to pick out features, the pale fan of their lower eyelashes, the downward curve of their mouth, a freckle that sits like a full stop just past their left eyebrow. 

_That’s you,_ Jehan thinks, mouths the words and notes the brief flash of their one crooked canine when they curl their lip a certain way. _You are a person. This is the person you are._

It’s too much to bear, this unpleasant brush with reality, and they retreat into the dark of the bar to wash the thoughts away.

* * *

Grantaire notices first. 

Jehan is surprised, distantly. They half expected it would be Courfeyrac or Enjolras.

But it’s R who notices, who catches hold of their wrist when they’re paying for a drink, grip too tight against already bruised skin. The marks are fading from ugly puce and plum to jaundiced yellow-greens.

“What the fuck,” he says and Jehan is glad, for a moment, that it’s him. 

That he’s already drunk.

That when they smile and duck their head coyly and say, “I’m not sure you want to know,” Grantaire just shrugs and grins and wishes them well.

“Whatever makes you happy,” he salutes sloppily with his beer bottle. “Safe, sane, consensual and all that shit.”  
  
Something settles like a weight in the pit of Jehan’s stomach but they force a smile anyway.

* * *

Jehan goes to meetings and joins in with hopeful talk of a bright future, the rights of man, enacting positive change.

Jehan smiles brightly and spins lies like silk, avoiding their reflection in the mirror behind the bar and the windows they pass on their walk home. That’s for later, when they’re alone and naked in their bedroom and they have no choice but to face the monster that coils beneath their ribs, drooling black bile and hatred.

Jehan learns the taste of gun oil against their tongue, the heavy weight of spit warmed metal pressing their jaw wide until it burns.  
  
Jehan learns how long they can go without breathing before lights sparkle at the edge of their vision and how every second past that point darkens the bruises that sit like jewels around their throat.  
  
(Jehan learns to add extra honey to their tea, to lie about a head cold, to never leave the house without a scarf, even in August.)

* * *

In bed, limbs trembling, breath catching, turning away from the hands that reach for them.

“I can't decide if you do that on purpose or not.” 

“What?”

Montparnasse smiles like he’s sharing a private joke. 

“Have you noticed,” he says. “That you only let people truly get close to you when they mean you harm?”

There’s something bleak in the hollows of his eyes but Jehan can’t bring themself to care.  
  
“That's not true.”  
  
Montparnasse digs sharp nails into the shallow cuts on Jehan’s stomach and when they gasp, tears welling up and spilling over, he kisses them away. 

“Yes, it is.”  
  
Jehan’s too tired to fight him, too tired to do anything.

They lay insensate on the sheets, Montparnasse’s body crushing the air from their lungs, his fingers too gentle as he smooths loose strands of hair wet with sweat and tears away from their flushed cheeks.

“I'm never going to give you what you want, sweetheart.” Montparnasse’s expression is harsh but his voice is disturbingly tender. “I don’t care how prettily you beg.”  
  
Jehan shoves him aside and stands on faltering legs, bruises throbbing on their sticky thighs, blood sticking to the fabric of their dress when they pull it over their head.  
  
Montparnasse lights a cigarette and watches them leave in silence.

* * *

Montparnasse is _raging_ and something in Jehan lights up at the sight of it.

He’s magnificent like this, eyes shining, mouth curled into a snarl as he shouts, hair loose and falling around his face as he shoves Jehan hard against the wall.

“Answer me!” A hand cracks across their face, sharp and sudden.   
  
Jehan can’t catch their breath, lifts numb fingers to press uselessly at their throbbing cheek.  
  
“Jehan!” Montparnasse shakes their shoulders viciously. “What did you _do_?_”_  
  
Jehan blinks, everything sliding back into focus.  
  
They’re in the street, outside a club, Montparnasse looks furious and, beneath that, terrified. He’s wearing old worn-in jeans and a t-shirt he sleeps in sometimes, Jehan’s never seen him dressed this casually in public before and it feels wrong. Like a violation of something private, a light shining on the obscene. He’d look less vulnerable naked.  
  
“What are you doing here?” The words tangle inelegantly on Jehan’s tongue.  
  
Montparnasse’s face does something complicated, his thumbs pressing painfully against Jehan’s collarbones.  
  
“You called me,” he says slowly, patiently, like this isn’t the first time he’s explained that.  
  
“Why would I call you?” Jehan wonders, distracted by how young Montparnasse’s bare face looks lit up in the golden glow of the streetlight.  
  
Montparnasse laughs wildly, digging bruises into Jehan’s shoulders. “I have no fucking idea.”  
  
_Why did you come?_ Jehan wants to ask next, but someone is dragging Montparnasse away.  
  
“Are you alright?” Grantaire asks, too close and too loud, tilting Jehan’s chin gently towards the light.  
  
Over Grantaire’s shoulder, Éponine is screaming at Montparnasse, shoving him fiercely away from the crowd that’s slowly gathering around them. Montparnasse lets himself be pushed but he shouts back, his voice a familiar thrumming note in the midst of all the noise in Jehan’s head.  
  
“I’m taking you home. Come on, let’s go,” Grantaire reaches out to guide Jehan away and they flinch. Grantaire’s face goes cold for a moment but then he smiles softly, reassuringly, and Jehan wants to protest.  
  
“It’s ok, Jehan. It’s just me.”  
  
Jehan closes their eyes and leans back against the wall.  
  
“Where’s Montparnasse?” they ask.  
  
“He’s gone.” Grantaire’s voice is pitched to be soothing but it just _grates_.  
  
“I need to find him,” Jehan slurs, but the world is spinning and they feel sick and there are hands on them, pulling them into the backseat of a car and after that-

* * *

Jehan wakes in an unfamiliar bed and readies themself for a fight. The morning after’s never pretty, even when it’s more like late afternoon.

Someone has carefully folded their clothes and left them on Grantaire’s desk, it’s the tidiest arrangement of items in the whole room. Jehan pulls their shirt on and wonders who undressed them.

Éponine, they deduce mere minutes later, judging by the way she won’t look them in the eye when they emerge into the apartment.

For breakfast, there is coffee with a side of nauseating pity and unspoken accusations.

They’re worried. They’ve _been_ worried. Jehan’s too thin, Jehan’s too quiet, Jehan never sleeps, Jehan’s covered in bruises and worse.

“You should know better,” Éponine says, fists clenched on the table in front of her. “What do you even think you’re doing with him?”

“You can stop making this about you at any time,” Jehan points out and she jerks back like they’d slapped her.

Grantaire sits silently by and stares into his coffee cup. There’s an oily film on the surface and his eyes are bloodshot. Guilt’s an ugly look on him, and the commiserating tone Jehan remembers from the night before isn’t much better.

Jehan gets up to go and Éponine follows with a scowl.

“So, what,” she tries to loom as Jehan pulls on their shoes. “You’re just going to go crawling back to him?”

Jehan laughs as they leave. The crawling’s the best part.

* * *

“Why should I let you in?”

Montparnasse looks drawn and tired, exhaustion weighing the lines of his body down as he leans faux-casually against the doorframe, but underneath that he looks _angry_, enough to set Jehan’s heart tripping over itself.

“Because you want to.” 

It’s dark in Montparnasse’s bedroom and the pacing, animal thing in Jehan’s chest starts to settle.

“Tell me,” Jehan murmurs and Montparnasse closes his eyes. In that moment he’s beautiful and broken and terribly young but when his lids lift all vulnerability is wiped away, and his countenance is distant and cruel. It’s better.  
  
“I love you,” he says, smiling when Jehan cringes. That isn't what they want to hear. Of course, that's why he'd say it. “Get on your fucking knees.”

* * *

  
  
_“What do you want?” Montparnasse asked, the first time._

_Jehan licked wine-stained lips and replied:_

_ “I want it to hurt.” _

* * *

Jehan drifts under a nicotine sky. Here, nothing can touch them in any way that matters.

“I mean it,” Montparnasse says, shoulders tight, head sunk low. “I’m done, Jehan. I won’t let you do this again.”  
  
Jehan crawls across ruined sheets on shaky hands and knees to drape themself over his back, bitten lips leaving bloody traces like lipstick smears against the nape of his neck.  
  
Montparnasse shudders at the touch and Jehan smiles.  
  
“Yes, you will.”

**Author's Note:**

> _I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time._  
Little Beast - Richard Siken


End file.
